Who Am I?

Who am I?
On Saturday's 10 mile run with my lovely Vane (coach, speed, crazy Nazi, love her) we were talking about how different we are. How much life has changed for both of us in the past 5 years.

I will never forget when I moved out to Milford, CT. I thought this was going to be great...uhmm I could have never been so wrong. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that I was able to get out of Chicago, because I was starting to feel like my life was a routine and I was not happy about it. Let me explain ... I moved from Chicago, where I had all my friends . I knew where to go and( hello !) I lived in Chicago which is the second best place next to New York of course....and where did I end up moving to??? Uhmm Milford, CT. Lets just say I would love it if I was married with 2.5 kids , a puppy and 3 cars. Its a great place to live if you have a family. Not if you're 25 years old.
Needless to say my sorority sisters (GOD BLESS THEM) took me in all the time. I would drive to New York on a weekly basis, party my butt off and then drive home on Sunday. I didn't notice it then, but on Saturday I realized that I was super depressed during my time in CT. I gained almost 40 pounds which on a short cute little thing like myself does not look well at all!! My weekends were always great but then during the week I barely had friends, I mean I had work friends but I was only really close with a couple of them.
Anywho, as we ran and shared stories about the highs and the lows, I realized that I have come full circle. Looking back in 2006, when I started to run I would have never thought a Marathon was in my future...and here I am tapering my runs for my second marathon in Paris.

Life sometimes is so funny. You can start off so great, hit the lowest of the low and then when you least expect it life totally does a 180 on you and you're on top again. Vane, said something that has stuck with me since that run...this is MarathonMadrigal 3.0 . Your old software is not comparable so don't sweat it. Y ou will never be that person again. I know she is so right sometimes. It 's just nice to hear.
So to update you on my last runs...T wo weeks ago on the 21st I did my 20 mile run on my own, with no Garmin Watch no iPod. Just me the road and my thoughts. Which after my weekend, was actually great! I had a boy visit me and I don't know how I am feeling about him just yet....O.K. maybe I do. I'm just not ready to admit to anything just yet. Still my run was great.

Now with less then two weeks away we are tapering for our Paris Marathon!!! RoCk On PaRiS!!!

With Vane getting her Visa we are all good to go. I cannot wait to run through the streets of Paris and come back with updates.
I know that Paris is going to be my fun run, NY now that is where I will do my PR and mark my words I will ROCK IT OUT!!

Hope everyone is still running!!

Why? Why do I do this to myself?!?!?!?!

What did I do to myself, you ask? Well, as I mentioned before, my dumb IT Band in my left leg totally killed me during the Manhattan Half. I went to see my PT Danielle and she told me to stay off it and I did. We worked on my IT Band and I made sure that I followed everything my PT said. Then this past Saturday, I joined my girls on a short 6.2 mile run which was great! I felt awesome because I had not gone running in so long, it made me realize how much I love and missed running in my park. After my run, I ran to the gym and stretched and did my exercises.

Awesome. I did great, right? Well, then I got a little too cocky....(CRAP!)

Sunday I took off, Monday I ran for 4 miles on the treadmill and then did 2 miles on the elliptical. Why you ask? Well, I went to lunch with my friend Kermit and had a milkshake, so of course I felt guilty and I also knew Blondie was going to make tacos so I had to work some of it off...yes, crazy, I know.

Tuesday I went to see Vane's bf, Robert to take his intense spin class and then a running class which my PT said that would be ok…Again, I got a little cocky. I got to the gym early, so I thought, let's work on my knee and do an easy 2 miles on the elliptical, then did my spin class, which of course kicked my ass, then my running class. So Robert (check him out http://www.terriertri.com/retrieve.php?section=about&page=newPage_b09006123b359840fd54df892506108c) , tells me that I am a lot of fun to yell at as he yelled. Our goal for this training run was to run at an easy tempo BUT he wanted our right foot to hit the treadmill 46 to 48 times in 30 seconds. Does that sound easy? Uhmm NO! As I am running on the treadmill I have my "coach" yelling at me "FASTER, 1,2,1,2, QUICKER". The highest I was able to get was 47, I told him that I felt weird running like that then he tells me that I finally look like a runner…Wow, talk about knocking my ego down. As I kept going and kept working on it, I was doing better. I felt great and then I had him come up to me again to tell me that I was doing great and to keep it up. I noticed a difference, a huge difference actually, and I realized that I worked a lot harder in these two miles then I had ever before.

Do I not challenge myself enough when I run? I don't think I do, which is not a good thing. I told Robert that I was going to try this new method out on my own and he told me that he wanted this run perfected by the time he got back. Which means that I have 4 weeks to perfect it. After the class I felt great. Again, I worked on my knee and stretched. I was good.

The next morning I woke up at 4:45 in the morning to run with Vane an easy 7. Or so I thought. I was wrong. I guess I did so much working up to this run that on my way back home my knee was throbbing and the pain was back. I really think that had I not done all the excessive elliptical stuff and running on the snow/ice didn't help either. Now I am back at square one. What sucks is that I saw Danielle yesterday and she did not let me complain once. She had a point... I did this to myself. Now I have to take it slow again and work on my knee and hopefully be able to run on Saturday.
I signed up to do the Haiti Relief run, so hopefully I can do it.

Man how do I get myself into these situations... :/

*Update* I can run the Haiti Race!! YEAH!!!

Hummm

I am totally stealing this from my friends blog (spanks sunshine)!

2010 is the year that I am going for it. Are you asking yourself what? Well EVERYTHING! I am going to be a little more outgoing a little more forward and I am going smile a lot more ;) (inside joke). I am going for it all this year. I mean come on what is the worst that will happen? Right?

FYI I am so loving all the snow today in NYC, I kind of wish I could be outside playing in the snow.

My first NF…what is NF you say…..well that is a No Finish….at least that’s what I thought.

Yep this past Sunday I started my first half marathon of the year and I didn’t finish. This had to be one of the hardest decisions I have had to make.

Why do you ask? Well at mile 9 my dumb IT Band started to hurt. So bad that I barely made it up Harlem Hill. Looking back, I think I probably should have walked, but I needed to run Harlem. This part was more mental than anything. I have hated Harlem Hill so much that I needed to get past the hill and then re-evaluate my knee situation. By the time I realized I might have to stop I was already over the hill. Just like that I was done with it then the pain set in. I cannot even tell you the pain that I felt, I thought, ok I will walk the rest of the way but when I came to 103rd street I knew I was done for. I had to stop. The pain was so bad I couldn’t walk so I went to a volunteer and told him that I needed help getting to my bag.

Now this is where the situation got bad, as I stood there with the volunteer he called the emergency number, no answer. Ok he called the next number and nothing. Then the next and no one was picking up the phone. He tried them all four again and again and again. At first I thought ok I am not dying I am ok but then once I started shivering that’s when I started to get annoyed. How could it be that with 4 emergency numbers there to call, no one picked up a phone? After standing there for 10 minutes a volunteer on a bike came over and said she would ride down to 90th to get the ambulance that was there. At this point I was freezing, shaking and the pain, oh the pain. Cara and Jenn came by and saw me and they stopped to see if I was ok. This was the moment that I lost it and just started to cry. Cara offered to stay but I told her to go on and that I would be ok. Plus I didn’t want to mess up her time for the half. I didn’t know that they called Vane but I was so thankful that they did and told her what happened so she could look for me at the medical tent.

Still no ambulance. The volunteer (bless him) saw that I was so cold and took off his jacket and gave it to me which helped a little. Now a cop truck came by and he radioed an ambulance to come over because they could not take me….why I don’t know. They have a truck and they were just sitting there in their truck as they saw how cold I was. Now I was getting so annoyed!! It took all of 20 minutes for an ambulance to get to me, and after I was in the ambulance, three other ones showed up. Does this make any sense?? What if I was really ill or worse had a heart attack..I could have died because the ambulances weren't around….Ok I get it that might be a little dramatic but seriously it took the ambulances 20 minutes to come to me, over 15 calls to four emergency numbers.

As I sat in the ambulance I got a little warm, and as both the paramedics sat with me in the back to get my information I asked them, if they could just drive me to baggage check to get my bag. Their response "where is that"? Are you serious??!! At this point I was done. I was so annoyed. So I asked someone else to please take me to where I could get my stuff. I was sure that all my friends had left since we had decided we would meet up after the race. Finally someone else got in and drove me to the medical tent, which was right by the finish line. In order for me to get to the finish line I had to cross across as people were crossing the finish line---and that broke my heart a little more. As I sat in the tent they warmed me up and iced up my knee, then I heard my name. I looked up and it was Vane and Steph. Steph made sure I was ok and then got me a bagel. As soon as Vane hugged me I lost it again. I was so bummed and my heart was broken because I didn’t finish the race, but like my doctor and PT told me and Vane reminded me this was not our race. I had to remember that.

After a chilling ice bath at Equinox (my new gym) with Vane and a hot runner with only compression shorts on (so hot HOT HOT caliente) and stretching, I felt better. I saw Danielle on Monday and she gave me strict orders... no running for two weeks. I am going to listen to her since she got me running the marathon and I experienced no pain. So as much as this will hurt me, I wont run for two weeks but once I do get back….I will be a Rock Star AGAIN!

One last thing... as I went to NYRR to see my NF, I actually had a time of 2:24 (my worst ever) I guess when I cut across to the medical tent my chip was close enough to the finish so it counted that as my time….great that means my pace is now registered as a 10:53! Oh well just one more thing to work up from, right? :)

Till the next race.
MM

Why do I do this to myself...I should of posted this last week...sorry ;)

That was the question that I asked myself as Coach Brian, Vane and I did hill speed workout.

Let me start by explaining the story... In order for us to get faster we need to obviously run faster and do several other things to get faster. So of course we ask our crazy coach Brian (3:09 marathon time) to train us. Our first practice was on one COLD January 2nd the weather was 20 degrees and the wind…well all I can say is that I thought I was going to fall over at one point. On our first practice we started with the Yasso 800's, boy these were so much harder than I thought. Picture this if you can….we are on a track with Coach B, and the intervals consist of 800 meter runs. My goal is to aim for a 4:15-4:30 hour marathon finish time, then run your 800 meter interval in 4:15 to 4:30 minutes. Jog for another 4 minutes and then repeat by running another 800 meters in 4:15-4:30 minutes. We were suppose to do this a total of 8 repetitions, but given the fridge wind, Vane and I only did 6, and I was totally ok with that.

Now, last night it was a much "nicer" night to run and with the weather up to a warmer 32 degrees it was not as bad. We met Coach B, at 6:45 to warm up. Then we ran the 3 mile lower loop of the park and then it began. Hill/speed workout…two words that should never ever go together!! We started at a pretty little light post by 69th I would say not too sure, and we ran passed Tavern on the Green….easy right? So not!! Running with Coach is so hard because he pushes us and does not let us give up. Let me explain the workout... Start at the light post at a moderate pace, we will say 65%, then increase to 75%. Once you hit the hill we need to pick up our pace to 80% and have a quicker turn over with our feet. Once we hit the top of this hill stay at 85% but elongate your stride and push through to the end spot. At this point, both Vane and I thought we were going to pass out. We did a total of 8 repetitions.

I honestly didn’t even think we were going to make it past 5 ( I was so happy to hear that Vane thought the same thing once we were done) but we did 8. I have said it once and I will say it again…Running is a mind game. Half the time I am playing this game and last night I had my mind telling me to stop. I thought I was going to pass out but then like a little devil on my shoulder I had Coach B telling me push through it, keep going to the sign, don’t stop. It worked I didn’t stop I kept pushing and yes after I hit the sign I wanted to DIE! But at the same time I never felt more alive. I love the feeling that running gives me. The feeling of power, accomplishment and most of all of feeling like a ROCK STAR!

So although I might be cursing myself out and Coach B, I know its for the best and I do enjoy our training sessions and I cant wait to keep it going…4:30 for Paris is definitely looking good…..4:15 for NYC even better!!!!

Till next time...FYI on Saturday the 9th I ran 10 miles with Vane on what was going to be the coldest day of the year. It ended up only being 20 degrees ha ha only 20, like that's considered warm! It was a great run the only thing was that as soon as we hit the 10 mile mark we STOPPED. Which was the wrong thing to do know we now...no stopping on cold days no matter how tired we are.

This weekend we will be doing 12 miles two loops of the park.

Offical Letter...Yes I am very excited! ;)

Marathon Madrigal,
Wear the 2010 NYC Half shirt, and join our training program to prepare for this half-marathon or your next race goal.

Congratulations! Here’s your NYC Half-Marathon entry number: 482465
You’ve been accepted to run the 2010 NYC Half-Marathon on March 21. The NYC Half, like the ING New York City Marathon, is an iconic race that inspires runners and fans alike with a course that includes some of the best sights in Manhattan.

If you’d like to make this race even more meaningful, you can choose from a variety of charity teams, including NYRR’s Team for Kids, to help a worthy cause.

We’ll contact you via e-mail with race details and special updates as we gear up together for the March 21 event. Check our race page often for the latest information.

We can’t wait to see you on this new spring date—perfect timing to get you ready for a spring marathon or kick off your racing season. Enjoy your training!

NYC Half Marathon!

Half-Marathon registration status: Accepted

Entry number: 482465

Hi everyone! You have read correctly I made it into the NYC Half Marathon lottery!! I feel super lucky especially since so many of my TFK peeps did not...bummer. They have told me they would cheer for me though, which makes it 100 times better.

Hope to see you out there cheering me on March 21st, 2010!!!

MM